Nowadays, contact centres and call centres are more common, for assisting the consumer of certain companies, and also providing information generally. For example, a centre of telesales or of distance offer of services and articles to a consumer user can follow one of two main paths. A first option is telephone contact, in which the salesman/saleswoman calls a user to offer his/her products and services. In this situation, the user may feel uncomfortable, since the call has not been done directly by the user, and therefore, except when the product is needed at that very moment, the contact is not very fruitful. In addition, the flow of information crossing between the salesman/saleswoman or agent, and the user, is limited to the only-audio channel of the telephone. In other cases, the user can call the salesman/saleswoman after seeing an advertisement of the product or service which is potentially of interest to him/her. However, this mode of commerce implies a costly offer campaign must first be carried out to get to the possible consumer user.
Another path for establishing distance contact, telesales or support and information is by using computers connected to the Internet, and by the publication of promotional webpages hosted in an appropriate server. By using said online mode of communication, the user, primarily the interested user, can search for the product potentially of interest and make contact with the salesman/saleswoman or agent who is offering the products and services. However, the use of webpages limits the direct contact between salesman/saleswoman, the informer or host, and the user, which is often vital for providing more information and for stimulating the interest of the user.
In an attempt to solve this last problem, some webpages provide videoconference services, allowing the user to contact an agent through direct communication. However, such communication has certain problems.
Thus, in some cases, videoconference or telepresence systems are used. These systems, which require that both user and provider are provided with specific equipment for using IP voice technology (voice over the Internet), require the user to have a computer equipped with a microphone and headphones appropriately installed and configured for use. In certain cases, a videoconference also requires that the user makes use of video cameras such as webcams, further complicating the connection, since not all users have this equipment or a compatible installation.
En certain situations, the equipment used is an integrated and specific videoconference equipment, which is not widely used and therefore would only be useful form small number of users.
These videoconference systems use a high bandwidth connection and are therefore not robust when used with connections of insufficient bandwidth, leading to interruptions and delays in voice reproduction, not being adequate for maintaining conversation fluency. In addition, the most common domestic connections, for example ADSL, have a reduced upload speed compared to the download speed, and therefore the communication in the direction user to agent is very limited. An added difficulty is that these systems require that the user downloads or installs additional software or a plug-in specific to the browser used, to provide the programs and protocols means appropriate for establishing the communication. This can be troublesome and difficult to do, depending on the computer used by the user.
A system proposed by the applicant comprises a number of nodes with a server of webpages which is accessible to the user by use of a remote computer. This web server comprises a form which is filled out by the user, comprising said form a field for introducing at least the telephone number of the user, which can be of a mobile telephone or of a landline telephone, in such a way that from the node a telephone call to the user is handled, allowing to establish a bidirectional audio communication of good. The node comprises a node or main server with databases, controlling a number of video-image servers and contact centre positions. These positions comprise at least one webcam or video-camera connected to the videoconference server, a telephone terminal connected to a switchboard, and optionally a computer connected to said remote server, in such a way that, through a monitoring server, a complete node is generated. Once the user has filled out the form with the telephone number, the node calls said telephone and connects the user to an agent in a contact centre.
The contact established comprises a bidirectional audio telephone communication between the user and the agent, and a unidirectional video communication from the agent in the contact centre to the user's computer, reducing bandwidth requirements during data transmission.
However, this system has the disadvantages of the node requiring a physical location with monitorization of the different contact centres, and that the telephone switchboard used will limit the number of agents that can be working at any one time. This reduces the efficiency of the service, because monitoring of available agents uses up time and the connection is established by the agent after a certain loss of time while the user answers the call. In addition, it is difficult to implement various services in the same contact node because the structure grows without any possibility of geographic distribution or scalability.